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Note: This post was written with my friend and colleague Rob Veltman (@robveltman). We carpool together and regularly talk about innovation and culture. Rob is an innovative product developer always challenging himself and his colleagues to ask the right questions to solve problems and make wishes come true. Rob is deeply interested in new product development, processes for (breakthrough) innovation and sustainability.IntroductionHow could we contribute to a more innovative organization? We ask ourselves this question regularly, help each other to come up with new ideas in this area and try to lead by example. We would like to share with you an aspect of our daily practice, which is the observation that our colleagues can experience hesitance in being innovative. We will propose a solution to overcome this hesitance. SituationKnowledge companies consist of very smart people, educated in different disciplines. Their knowledge workers are confronted with all kinds of interesting iss…

Every now and then I run into something that really gets me thinking. Recently I ran into this presentation.ActivityStrea.ms: Is It Getting Streamy In Here?View more presentations from Chris Messina. I went through it several times. And I think I'll do so in the coming days. Really great stuff!!Activity Streams: what are they, how can we collect and understand them? This presentation focuses on public streams, mostly on the internet. But does this story also extend to the streams behind the firewall, inside organization? I think it should, but I'm thinking about how this should work. Of course the firewalls are coming down. But companies will still be protecting their information to a certain extent. My thesis is: These streams will be most useful if the distinction between protected and public information is mixed.What do you think? And how do you think one stream of internal and external information can be devised? I'd love to hear your thoughts.(Note: Thx Tom (@tvgtvg) f…

4th keynote at Intranet 2010 by Peter Hinssen.
Will intranets be around in the future? 4 fundamentals:content (old, put stuff somewhere)intelligenceknowledgecollaboration (newer, share things)The trash bin is not used a lot in IT.
We are drowning in information but are starved of knowledge - John Naisbitt. Is information still of strategic value?
Paperless office
Consumerization of IT. Leading to new behavior wrt information.
Information behavior is key. It's moving quicker than hardware development.
Digital is the new normal. We are half-way there. Let's take this to the limit.
It's not information overload, but it's filter failure. Show me your folders and I will tell you who you work for.
The depth of information will go to infinity. The price of information will go to 0. Privacy, we will live in a fish-bowl society.
Patience is also going to 0. Users don't want to fill things out again and again. And the internet will be real-time.
Now reflect on this, what doe…

3rd keynote at Intranet 2010 by James Robertson of Step Two Designs.Innovation = originality + impact. Uncovering great ideas and approaches to intranet, so you can steal them (ethically of course).James tells how the Intranet Innovation Award is set up. Jane McConnell is one of the judges. She should be one of next year's keynote at Intranet 2011.CRS Australia is the Platinium award winner:seamless connection with SAP (human friendly interface so tasks get done, webforms etc) > done with one technical person AEP (USA) Idea system:$8 million of concrete savings, $2 million in first month first offline organization, then support via platform organize around problems (a specific question!) specific target: min. of $1.7 million dollars of saving None of the generated ideas are anonymous (same for Océ). Anonymous posts are allowed but not published. They are sent to team. Next example, Russian firm (CHTPZ). Integrates intranet with mobile. Lots of staff doesn't sit at desk. So …

Breakout session by Toby Ward (and blog).Gives a general overview of Sharepoint old and new versions. "Sharepoint does a lot of things, but does very few things very well." (CMSWatch) Search is ok, not perfect. Content management is basic, simple, but some need heavier stuff. Some clients have site sprawl. Although not many in the room seem to have this problem. Good integration with Microsoft tools, although sometimes work is needed. Sharepoint can be extensive.The above-mentioned remarks relate mostly to Sharepoint 2007.Not many using Sharepoint to power to the corporate intranet. More on department and workgroup level.Now over to Sharepoint 2010. Release date is May 12. (A guy in the room won the Canada cap for getting that right.)Toby says: don't migrate right away. Wait for the first service pack to be released.Parts of Sharepoint 2010:sitescomposites (mashups)insightssearchcontentcommunitiesBiggest improvements: the publishing platform (wiki - which is much better …

2nd key note at Intranet 2010 by Toby Ward.Here are my notes of this talk.50% of the intranets now have social media. 50% of the companies have blogs. 7% have no plans to implement blogs.Gives examples of companies using blogs in the organization. Also mentions Oce's MoneyMaker platform. He also mentions people finding it hard to keep up and find the blogs they need to read. One company has a way to feed interesting posts to people based search terms/profile.Wiki deployment, 49%. 10% have no plans to deploy. This is here to stay. Shows BT's wiki. (My note: BT is great in this area!)39% of employees under the age of 25 would consider leaving their job if their company doesn't offer networking tools. (Note: Jeremiah Owyang says: When you want to work somewhere, take a look at their intranet first and you'll know what the company looks like and how they work.)Gives an example of a company with a routing service helping people find each other in the company.Tells about lau…

Key note number 1 at Intranet 2010: Gerry McGovern.Here are my notes of Gerry's talk!Describes the trends in publishing: from controlled publishing to uncontrolled editing.If you have a 5000 page intranet you should be in an AA meeting for intraweb developers.The intranet will no longer be controlled by Communications, unless they change. People don't like to be communicated at!A successful intranet is an intranet that helps people do the things they came there to do. The number 1 purpose of the intranet is efficiency and productivity. The intranet is a survivor's guide to a shitty week.Don't create an idealization of your intranet users (persona's...).News is important, but it's only a component to a good intranet. Step away from the rivalries between the disciplines (IT, Communications, etc).Constant analysis of the use of the intranet is important. This leads to an intranet that actually works. Look at click-behavior, navigation behavior, come-and-leave beha…

As you know Océ is experimenting with enterprise microblogging. And things are going very well. The number of users is still growing and the number of posts is too.There's lots of debate about the ROI of social media. Recently I was asked if we try to calculate the ROI of our microblogging initiative for instance. This is what I replied:We didn't do ROI calculations yet and don't know if we want to. Anyway users like Yammer for many reasons:sharing interesting stuff publicly, others like to be informed in this way (social search), use Yammer as pulse of the company, asking questions and getting answers from colleagues all over the world is great (people solve issues much quicker this way. It saved a colleague two weeks of her time!), less email more yams, implicit expertfinder, etc. Hope this helps.

Sitting in the train I had time to read 'What Matters Now'.I loved it. It's a very inspiring read. A great way to tap into the minds of great people. And all that for free! All contributors were asked to write a one-pager about a word. E.g. Power, Harmony, Compassion.Here's some of the parts I enjoyed most:Vision is the lifeblood of any organization. It is what keeps it moving forward. It provides meaning to the day-to-day challenges and setbacks that make up the rumble and tumble of real life. -- Michael Hyatt (This relates nicely to my post about Vision vs Scale.)The One Percenters are often hidden in the crevices of niches, yet they are the roots of word of mouth. This year, your job is to find them and attract them. -- Jackie Huba & Ben McConnell Peer production, open source, crowdsourcing, DIY and UGC - all these digital phenomena are starting to play out in the world of atoms, too. The Web was just the proof of concept. Now the revolution gets real. -- Chris …

Well well, I finally had time to finish this post. It's been a while ago since the 'State of the Blogosphere 2009' (SofB) has been published. I'd like to share the things I learned from this great yearly report.I'll start with something I missed in the report: the number of blogs related to the number of active blog (bloggers posting at least once a week). It is mentioned that the levels of active bloggers has remained similar to 2008. This report underlines that the Blogosphere is still strong. Although there has been some discussion if blogging is dead or old-skool, the SofB says the blogging world is changing, but very alive and kicking. The report revolves around 4 types of bloggers: hobbyists, part-timers, self-employeds and Pros. The Hobbyists are the largest group, but the Pros is more influential every year. Another trend is the blog is taken ever more seriously by mainstream media. Interestingly the large part of the bloggers is highly educated and affluen…

A nice quote taken from Andrew McAfee's article "Shattering the Myths About Enterprise 2.0" (HBR Nov. 2009):A leader ... is like a shepherd. He stays behind the flock, letting the most nimble go out ahead, whereupon the others follow, not realizing that all along they are being directed from behind.